How not to waste other people's time

For the sake of secrecy, let’s just say that I have a hunch that the paper I co-wrote with my bachelor advisor will actually get published to the Journal of Graph Theory! Needless to say, I am very happy about this but were also reminded of one of my bad habits: I have phases, especially during holidays, where I won’t regularly respond to mails.

My advisor wrote me the e-mail on thursday and today is monday. You can guess what I have been up to till now.

Anyhow, those phases aren’t unique to mails: The higher the number of unread messages is, the less likely it becomes for me to go through them. And don’t get me wrong, I would then feel bad about this, but this in turn makes me even more opposed to just simply reading them. What if I missed out something important? What if someone now got angry?

I know it’s very irrational to then just pretend that everything is fine while letting that unnecessary guilt sink in, but to my credit, I have been fixing this.

But well, sometimes it happens again. And I may have my reasons for them, but if there is one thing I learned from my thesis, then it’s that (at least in the academic world), if you don’t answer mails quickly (or at least at the answer them at the same day), then it will (make them feel like) you’re wasting they’re time. And to some extent, you are. And no matter how you may look at it, if you didn’t make it clear to them beforehand that you will not be able to respond for some time due to reason $x$ or $y$, then it’s ultimately your fault.

So yeah, just keep that in mind before you frustrate your academic advisor.